Protest the game maker but don’t stop there

I want to be clear: I am all for pressuring certain game publishers to make changes in the way they portray women in their games.

But I suggest not stopping there.

Most companies don’t care what they sell as long as it returns a profit.* As for choosing a product to sell profitably, there’s a hard and an easy way to go about it. The hard way is to push what no one would buy otherwise. The easy way is to find out what people are willing to pay for, and then supply it to them. Most companies opt for the easy way.

That tells you that when a company keeps on supplying a product, there are enough people demanding it to make supplying it profitable. If the demand dries up, the supply will, too. That is how capitalism works. Or, when it comes to matters of taste and sometimes conscience, fails to work.

By all means pressure companies to drop or change objectionable products. You may well succeed. But for a lasting fix, it’s vitally important to reach out to those who see nothing wrong with buying and using that product. Show them why it’s harmful. Show them why they should have no part of it.

Do not expect a willing audience. You will most likely have to whittle away over time. You may have better luck with the rising generation while leaving to attrit those who don’t get it. Either way, it is worth the effort and the time.

—Steve Cuno

*Despite, if they have one, some lofty mission statement hanging in the break room. I’ll never forget the bank whose mission statement said, “While some banks are looking to make a profit, we want to make a difference, one person at a time.” Yeah, right. I doubt that even the person who wrote that believed it.

On the shocking and scandalous revelation that women and men can work together without misbehaving

One day a highly competent, single, female vendor called to arrange an account review. I suggested meeting over lunch as we had in the past. Not without a bit of shock to her voice, she gasped, “We can’t do that. You’re married now.”

The second part of her statement was true. I had recently married. It was the first part, the “we can’t do that” part, that was nonsense.

Not that the nonsense was new to me. I have run into it throughout my career. I am writing about it today thanks to its re-rearing its vacuous head just this morning, when a female business contact said she hadn’t phoned because it “... seemed inappropriate.” From prior conversations, her meaning was clear. The one time we had met for a business lunch, her associates all but stitched a scarlet A on every item in her wardrobe. She was loath to risk further scorn.

I do not blame either of the women. In their respective places of employ, they are at the mercy of a silly and insulting but apparently powerful meme. I first encountered it some 35 years ago, when a supervisor took me aside to explain that it was inappropriate for male and female associates ever to be one-on-one. That included, he said, being in an office with the door closed, in a car, or in a restaurant.* Why? Two reasons. (1) It might lead to temptation. (2) Even with all on the up-and-up, others seeing us might make unseemly assumptions. What an insult to women and men. I trust my female (and, for that matter, male) business associates to keep their hands to themselves.** They trust me to do the same.

What an insult to busybodies. No self-respecting busybody is about to be deterred by a little thing like discretion.

What an insult to people having affairs. A no-one-on-one policy is, pardon the pun, impotent as preventive measures go. Anyone hellbent on a dalliance will find a way, lunch or no lunch. Moreover, it is no one’s business but their own.

Most people with jobs tend to be male or female, making the odds of male-female business encounters pretty high. Following that little chat with my supervisor, my now late wife and I had a conversation. “Most of my contacts at work are women,” I said. “If someone tells you they saw me having lunch with a woman, it’s probably true.” Paula was fine with it. It’s called “trust.” It’s called “maturity.”

I can only wonder what busybodies may have thought when my right-hand account executive, a woman 30 years my junior, traveled with me, once to Ohio and once to Colorado. Our rooms were in the same hotel and we went out together for meals. Locally, we routinely drove to appointments together. At times someone might have even seen us laughing while alone in the car! For years prior to that, I was cooped up daily for hours on end and often took lunch with a female business partner who happened to be my age.

All, I shouldn’t need to add and almost didn’t, without so much as a hint of hanky, much less panky.

—————————————————————————————--*Though it’s beside the point, the middle of a restaurant amid other diners hardly strikes me as “alone.”**This is also beside the point, but with one look you will realize that keeping one’s hands off of me requires no feat of will.

3 ways “worst” made the best subject line

I receive so many daily marketing updates that I open only those that compel me with a great subject line. This morning, it was Today@TargetMarketing that managed to break through. The subject line read, “The Worst Sales Letter of the Year.” There were three reasons that the subject line grabbed me:

Reason 1: Schadenfreude. Yes, I can be that small. Sometimes it’s reassuring to think that just once, somewhere, someone may have done worse than my worst. Reason 2. Morbid curiosity. I just had to see this bad sales letter.

Reason 3: Sheer terror. What really pushed me over the edge was the alarmed voice in the back of my head that kept screaming, “You’d better click through right now and make sure that this ‘worst’ sales letter isn’t something you wrote.”Whew. It isn’t. So if the subject line also hooked you, it’s fine with me if you read the article.